1. Are all the bits above compatible? 2. Are there any bad choices, please suggest better/different? 3. The CPU cooler, any idea if it comes with a heat sink, do i just seat it on the mobo? 4. The memory, should i have gone for DDR2? Should I have gone for PC4000? Will either of these work with the Mobo? I've noticed they have higher latencies, is the trade off worth it? 5. Is it next gen? can I play BF2 on max (as my current XP3000 and X800XTPE struggles right now) 6. Does anyone know when the X1800 crossfire master card is coming out?

This is ATI's first crack at a chipset. It sounds promising, but I'd wait until they matured a little (at least the second generation). nForce4 is damn solid and as Antonio suggests, the ASUS A8N32 SLI board is a sweet board. That with some high quality Corsair or GSKILL RAM and if you run single card video, you could go with ATI.

One question though, you said there are some nice o/c'd 7800's out there that beat the x1800?

the quickest 7800 i can find is the BFG GeForce 7800 GTX OC 512MB GDDR3 VIVO TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GX-011-BG) that is oc'd an additional 30MHz on the core and 50MHz on the memory to 580MHz / 1750MHz.is this the quickest? it depends how you measure it, but the x1800 runs at 625mhz, although only with 16pipes.Do you know of a quicker one?

While I am waiting for these bits to arrive (and I had to get some flown in from the US.. good old ebay) can someone recommend a good cpu heat sink & fan that will fit an FX55 on the A8N32 board? does anyone know if the board is the right size to accomodate a larger fan like the Zalman flower? 2nd question. If I add another 7800GTX in SLi mode, will the FX55 CPU be a bottleneck?